Deborah Levy

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The audacious and elegiac second installment in her 'living autobiography' on writing and womanhood, from the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, Deborah Levy returns to the subject of her life in letters. The Cost of Living reveals a writer in radical flux, considering what it means to live with value and meaning and pleasure. This perfectly crafted snapshot of a woman in the process of transformation is as distinctive, wide-ranging and original as Levy's acclaimed novels, an essential read for every Deborah Levy fan.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2016Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power - from the Man Booker shortlisted author of Swimming Home

Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness andher doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives. Intoxicated by thick heat and the seductive people who move through it, both women begin to see their lives clearly for the first time in years.

Through the opposing figures of mother and daughter, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of womanhood. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, Hot Milk is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.

A hypnotising summer novel from the twice Man Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

A group of hedonistic West European tourists gather to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau. Then an Englishwoman is brutally murdered, and the sad, eerie child Tatiana declares she knows who did it.

The subsequent inquiry into the death proves to be more of an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage and sadistic desire. The Unloved offers a bold and revealing look at some of the events that shaped European and African history, and the perils of a future founded on concealed truth.

Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's sparkling response to Orwell's Why I Write.

'Things I Don't Want to Know' is a unique response to George Orwell from one of our most vital contemporary writers. Taking Orwell's famous list of motives for writing as the jumping-off point for a sequence of thrilling reflections on the writing life, this is a perfect companion not just to Orwell's essay, but also to Levy's own, essential oeuvre.

'An up-to-date version of 'A Room of One's Own' . . . I suspect it will be quoted for many years to come' Irish Examiner

'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression' Jeanette Winterson

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of numerous highly praised books including The Unloved, Swallowing Geography and Beautiful Mutants, all of which are now published by Penguin. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.

Early Levy comprises two pioneering early works by Man Booker-shortlisted writer Deborah Levy.BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS Lapinski, a manipulative and magical Russian exile, summons forth a number of highly contemporary urban pilgrims. Through them, Levy explores broken dreams and self-destructive desires in a shimmering, dislocated allegory of its times.

& SWALLOWING GEOGRAPHY Like her namesake Jack Kerouac, J.K. is always on the road, travelling Europe with her typewriter in a pillowcase. From J.K.'s irreverent, ironic perspective, Levy charts a new, dizzying, end-of-the-century world of shifting boundaries and displaced peoples.

'She storms through the back door, refusing to be weighed down with rationalist and aesthetic baggage . . . [This] is a world on the brink of destruction but it's going down with a barnyard laugh and an explosive extravagance of imagination' Blitz'It throbs its way into the imagination like the unguided missile it decries' Observer on Beautiful Mutants

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of numerous highly praised books including Things I Don't Want to Know and The Unloved, both of which are now published by Penguin. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards (UK Author of the Year) and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.

Beautiful Mutants is a stunning early novel by the Man Booker-shortlisted Deborah Levy.

Levy's surreal and artful first novel, Beautiful Mutants, introduces Lapinski -- the manipulative and magical Russian exile who summons forth a number of urban pilgrims in a shimmering contemporary allegory about broken dreams and desires . . .

'A stunningly original writer' Kirsty Gunn

'It throbs its way into the imagination like the unguided missiles it decries' Observer

'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression' Jeanette Winterson

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of highly praised books including The Unloved, Things I Don't Want to Know, Swallowing Geography and Billy and Girl. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards (UK Author of the Year) and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, while the title story of her most recent work of fiction, Black Vodka, was shortlisted for the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award.

Swallowing Geography is a stunning early novel by the Man Booker-shortlisted Deborah Levy.

Embedded in this beautifully written novel is Deborah Levy's gift for blending fairytale with biting satire. Through the voice of the irreverent and ironic narrator J.K., Swallowing Geography interrogates the yearning of discontented children, imagined homes and strangers and histories at the turbulent close of the 20th century.

'A stunningly original writer' Kirsty Gunn

'One of the few British writers comfortable on a world stage' New Statesman

'Levy's strength is her originality of thought and expression' Jeanette Winterson

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of highly praised books including The Unloved, Things I Don't Want to Know, Beautiful Mutants and Billy and Girl. Her novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards (UK Author of the Year) and 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, while the title story of her most recent work of fiction, Black Vodka, was shortlisted for the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award.

Biography

Deborah Levy is a British playwright, novelist and poet. She is the author of six novels: Beautiful Mutants (1986); Swallowing Geography (1993); The Unloved (1994); Billy & Girl (1996); Swimming Home (2011); and Hot Milk (2016). Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 as well as the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, and Hot Milk was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 and the Goldsmiths Prize 2016. Deborah is also the author of a collection of short stories, Black Vodka (2013), which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. She has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC.